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PRIVATE BROWSING 2.0

Safari 17.0 adds link tracking protection, blocking network loads of known trackers, advanced fingerprinting protection, and more to Private Browsing.

WHAT I GOT WRONG ABOUT VR

Virtual reality headsets are devices designed for selfish consumption, separating users visually from reality.

today.

APPLE RELEASES IOS 18 PUBLIC BETA FOR IPHONE — HERE'S WHAT'S NEW AND HOW TO GET IT

The iOS 18 public preview is now available. The update allows users to put icons anywhere on the home screen, change app icon color, add lock screen shortcuts for apps other than camera and flashlight, and more. It has a more customizable Control Center menu and a redesigned Photos app. The update will only run on iPhones released in 2018 or later.

ZERO TO BILLIONS: THE STARTUP ON THE VERGE OF THE BIGGEST TECH EXIT IN YEARS

Cloud cybersecurity company Wiz was founded four years ago by four former Israeli military officers. It grew quickly to become the dominant company in cloud cybersecurity and is headed toward the largest exit for any tech startup since Rivian's $77 billion initial public offering in November 2021. Google is looking to acquire the company for a $23 billion sale price. The deal will likely draw scrutiny from antitrust regulators in the US and EU.

IMMUNOTHERAPY IS CHANGING CANCER TREATMENT FOREVER

The human immune system is very good at attacking anything it registers as a disease - if it could be turned against cancer, it could eliminate tumors more thoroughly than surgery and more durably than chemotherapy. Scientists have managed to modify T cells to react to cancer as if it were a virus and destroy it. The therapy has been used to remove glioblastomas, a common type of brain cancer with a median time of diagnosis to death of just over a year.

WHERE'S THE SYNTHETIC BLOOD?

The creation of synthetic blood is one of the holy grails of biomedical research. There are two main approaches to making synthetic blood products: the biologist's approach and the chemist's approach. The biologist's approach involves coaxing stem cells into becoming blood cells, while the chemist's approach synthesizes molecules and particles that mimic the functions of blood cells. Both approaches need to overcome economic and manufacturing challenges before they can scale for use in patients.

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SCALE BY SPECTRAL COMPUTE#

SCALE is a GPGPU programming toolkit that allows programs written using the popular CUDA language to be natively compiled for AMD GPUs. It accepts CUDA programs as is and serves as a drop-in replacement for nvcc. SCALE acts as an installation of the NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit, so it will work with existing build tools and scripts. It offers opt-in language extensions that can make writing GPU code easier and more efficient.

WHY FACEBOOK DOESN'T USE GIT

Facebook uses Mercurial instead of Git, building custom workflows on top of the tool for performance. Facebook used Git years ago, but it started facing performance issues, and the response from Git maintainers wasn't cooperative, with the maintainers pushing back on improving performance and instead recommending that Facebook shard its monorepo. The Facebook team looked at its alternatives and chose Mercurial, which had a community of maintainers who were welcoming to changes made by them. The story shows how kindness and openness can go far in the world of devtools.

SAUDI MONEY MAKES A BIG SPLASH IN VIDEO GAMES

The Saudi government plans to invest $38 billion in video games by 2030 through its Public Investment Fund. It is holding the inaugural Esports World Cup this month in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Many of the world's largest video game companies and influencers have quietly partnered with the Saudis. Photos from the event, which will run for eight weeks, are available in the article.

ASK HN: HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT FINDING A JOB? (HACKER NEWS THREAD)

This Hacker News thread takes a look at what the job market is currently like, both for recruiters and job seekers. While many respondents confirm that a lot of employment is found through direct connections rather than through job postings, many companies still require potential workers to go through the interview process. The thread contains a lot of advice for job seekers from people who have been successful at finding new employment during their careers.

GOOGLE NOW DEFAULTS TO NOT INDEXING YOUR CONTENT

MICROSOFT UNVEILS A LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL THAT EXCELS AT ENCODING SPREADSHEETS

SpreadsheetLLM uses a Chain of Spreadsheet framework that can decompose spreadsheet reasoning into a table detection-match-reasoning pipeline.

WHY, AFTER 6 YEARS, I'M OVER GRAPHQL

This article looks at why developers should avoid Graph QL and presents alternatives to use instead.

MICROSOFT CTO KEVIN SCOTT THINKS LLM “SCALING LAWS” WILL HOLD DESPITE CRITICISM

Critics in the AI community say that progress in large language models has plateaued and the development may be approaching diminishing returns.

COMPANY ABANDONS PLANS TO GIVE AI WORKERS "RIGHTS" AND ADD THEM TO ORG CHART AFTER OUTCRY FROM HUMAN EMPLOYEES

HR software company Lattice will no longer pursue digital workers in its products after backlash.

HOW CLOSE IS AI TO REPLACING PRODUCT MANAGERS?

Most people underestimate how close AI tools are to replacing the work of a human because they aren't using the latest models or making use of prompt engineering.

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GOOGLE REPORTEDLY IN ADVANCED TALKS TO ACQUIRE CYBER STARTUP WIZ FOR $23 BILLION, ITS LARGEST-EVER DEAL

Google may be acquiring cybersecurity firm Wiz for $23 billion. Wiz, founded in 2020, had been eyeing an IPO as recently as May, when it achieved a valuation of $12 billion. Its security offering gives companies insight into their full cloud presence. If completed, the deal will be Google's largest acquisition yet.

SPACEX ROCKET ACCIDENT LEAVES THE COMPANY'S STARLINK SATELLITES IN THE WRONG ORBIT

A SpaceX rocket has failed for the first time in nearly a decade. The upper stage engine of the Falcon 9 rocket malfunctioned several minutes into flight. It left 20 Starlink satellites in an orbit less than half of what was intended. The company is attempting to boost some of the satellites to a higher orbit using onboard ion thrusters, but it is unlikely to be successful. The satellites will likely return to the atmosphere and burn up. The Federal Aviation Administration says the problem must be fixed before SpaceX can fly its Falcon rockets again.

EX-META SCIENTISTS DEBUT GIGANTIC AI PROTEIN DESIGN MODEL

EvolutionaryScale, a company launched by ex-Meta scientists, applies cutting-edge machine learning models trained on language and images to biological data. It has developed a model that speaks the language of proteins called ESM3. ESM3 can be used to create proteins to specifications provided by users. It has been used to create new fluorescent molecules. A small version of the model that was trained without data from specific viruses, pathogens, and toxins has been open sourced.

THIS IS THE FASTEST OBJECT EVER MADE BY HUMANS, AND IT'S NOT SLOWING DOWN

NASA's Parker Solar Probe was recorded traveling at 635,266 kilometers per hour on June 29. It is expected to reach a top speed of around 692,000 kph when it makes its closest approach to the Sun in 2025. The probe uses Venus' gravity to create a sort of gravity-powered slingshot to reach its incredible speeds. It will eventually get within 6.12 million kilometers of the layer of ionized gas considered to be the Sun's surface.

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PROPERTY: NEXT-GEN CSS VARIABLES NOW WITH UNIVERSAL BROWSER SUPPORT

@property extends the CSS language by providing meaning and context to CSV variables. It can be used to define a type for custom properties, preventing unexpected results and supporting new possibilities like animating gradients. The enhanced type safety opens up new opportunities for testing and validation directly within CSS.

CAN CHATGPT DO DATA SCIENCE?

The challenges of using ChatGPT are worse for data science tasks. Data scientists often work with very large data sets that have quality issues on tasks that may require domain expertise. Using ChatGPT will mean that data scientists also have to understand the context, data, code, and assumptions in ChatGPT's responses. Data scientists are still undecided whether tasks in the field are suitable for ChatGPT or not.

OPENAI REVENUE

Sam Altman projected $3.4 billion in annual recurring revenue for OpenAI in June. This report takes a look at publicly available data to calculate whether this projection is accurate. Most of OpenAI's revenue comes from ChatGPT Plus subscribers, with around 21% coming from ChatGPT Enterprise and 15% from the API. The full report is available in the article.

HERE'S HOW MUCH VALVE PAYS ITS STAFF — AND HOW FEW PEOPLE IT EMPLOYS

Valve employed just 336 staff in 2021. Its small number of staff across the board seems to explain why the company's product list is so limited despite its immense business. Its profitability per employee is higher than that of Google, Amazon, or Microsoft. A table containing employee pay data from Valve sorted by year and category is available in the article.

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AT&T SAYS HACKER STOLE CELL, TEXT DATA ON NEARLY ALL ITS WIRELESS CUSTOMERS

The records included details about how different phone numbers interacted with each other but no contents of the calls or messages.

THE SIX DUMBEST IDEAS IN COMPUTER SECURITY

These ideas are usually misguided attempts to do the impossible by well-meaning people or companies who just don't fully understand the situation.

ELON MUSK'S X TO SUBLEASE S.F. HEADQUARTERS, TECH COMPANY'S FUTURE IN CITY UNCLEAR

The Mid-Market area has been struggling with rising vacancies, quality-of-life issues, and dropping real estate values since the pandemic.

DEAR AWS, PLEASE LET ME BE A CLOUD ENGINEER AGAIN

AWS' obsession with Generative AI is causing it to neglect everything that made it the leading cloud provider in almost every metric.

USE A WORK JOURNAL TO RECOVER FOCUS FASTER AND CLARIFY YOUR THOUGHTS

Using a work journal can help maintain focus while switching contexts all day long.

X IS BUILDING A ‘DISLIKE' BUTTON FOR DOWNVOTING REPLIES

X is only considering allowing downvotes on replies to help showcase better replies while moving less-liked replies further down the thread.

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THERMONUCLEAR BLASTS AND NEW SPECIES: INSIDE ELON MUSK'S PLAN TO COLONIZE MARS

SpaceX employees are working on the design and details of a Martian city. Teams are working on habitats and spacesuits to combat the planet's hostile environment. The initiatives are still in their infancy. Elon Musk told SpaceX employees in April that he expects one million people to be living on Mars in about 20 years. Musk's vision for Mars underlies most of the six companies that he leads or owns - each could potentially contribute to an extraterrestrial colony.

OPENAI DEFINES FIVE 'LEVELS' FOR AI TO REACH HUMAN INTELLIGENCE — IT'S ALMOST AT LEVEL 2

OpenAI recently shared a five-level system for tracking its artificial general intelligence progress. The levels go from what is currently available to AI that can perform the same amount of work as an organization. They may change based on feedback from employees, investors, and the company's board. OpenAI executives believe the company's AI is currently on the first level, but it is getting close to level two, where AI can perform basic problem-solving.

INSIDE THE LABORATORY FOR EXTRAORDINARY MICROBES

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A NEW HORMONE THAT CAN BUILD STRONG BONES

Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Davis recently discovered that Maternal Brain Hormone (CCN3) increases bone density and strength in mice. The hormone's effects explain how women's bones remain relatively robust even as calcium is stripped from their bones to support milk production. Mice with increased CCN3 had dramatic increases in bone mass and strength over the course of weeks, regardless of age and sex. The hormone can be administered through a hydrogel patch applied directly to the site of a bone fracture.

AWS SECRETS MANAGER AGENT

The AWS Secrets Manager Agent is a client-side HTTP service that standardizes the consumption of secrets for the Secrets Manager across Amazon environments. It can retrieve and cache secrets in memory so applications can fetch secrets from localhost instead of making calls to the Secrets Manager. The agent can only make read requests and can't modify secrets.

MANDALA

mandala eliminates the effort and code overhead of ML experiment tracking by allowing researchers to automatically save, query, and version Python computations. It can capture the inputs, outputs, and code of Python functions, automatically organize executions of imperative code into a high-level computation graph of variables and operations, query relationships between variables, and automate exploration and high-level operations. Tutorials are available.

UNIQUE NEW VESTING SCHEDULES

Companies traditionally use a 4-year vesting schedule where employees get 25% of their total equity grant every year for 4 years as long as they're with the company. More companies have started experimenting with unique vesting schedules to attract more talent while also saving money. This article highlights a few of these companies and their vesting schedules. Many of the grants typically net lower than they used to.